Poker games using playing cards are popular and well known. In one such game known as Pai Gow Poker is played in many casinos and card clubs. To play the game the players each make a wager to play a hand. Seven cards are dealt to each player and the dealer. From the seven cards, each player makes a two card low hand and a five card high hand. The high hand must have a Poker ranking higher than that of the low hand. In my patent JACKPOT PAI GOW POKER, U.S. Pat. No. 5,584,486 issued Dec. 17, 1996, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, the game of Pai Gow Poker is described.
Each player's hand is compared to the dealer's hand. If both the player's high and low hands outrank the dealer's corresponding high and low hands, the player is paid even money on their wager. Conversely, if both the dealer's hands outrank the player's, the player loses their wager which is collected by the dealer. Where one of the player's hands outranks the corresponding hand of the dealer but the other does not, the hand is declared a draw or "push".
On player winning hands, the casino exacts a commission of typically 5%.
A drawback to the traditional game of Pai Gow Poker is that approximately 40% of the hands result in a push. Thus, for this percentage of hands, there is no winner or loser and hence no commission or win for the casino.
One method advanced to reduce the number of pushes is described in Kong, U.S. Pat. No. 5,580,061 which adds the values of the cards of the player's and dealer's hands to determine whether the sum is odd or even and declaring a winner if both values are odd or even.
It would be advantageous to provide a game which includes the strategy of assembling multiple hands and eliminates ties.